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This is actually on my main website… but since most people don’t know about my move to my own URL yet, here’s the poll! And make sure you update your bookmarks to my new website, www.nicholasreicher.com!

I’ve spent some time working on possible logos for my website… these will also be used on business cards, envelopes, letterheads, portfolios, social media, etc! Your poll is important! Please take a moment and give me your opinion!

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I’ve moved to my own website – www.nicholasreicher.com. All of my new content can be found there! Please do me this favor and make sure to follow my new site – I’ll be introducing more original fiction (some written for the website), advice for writers, advice for readers, and more advice for Screenplay writers as well!

I’ve also got my nifty, time saving colorful template for Scrivener for free on my new website! Update your bookmarks, and be sure to follow my blog at its new location! It’s more fun than birthday cake!

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My custom made beat board sits on my wall next to me, waiting. I didn’t design it, that was my wife’s idea. She specifically bought a fairly pathetic painting from the thrift store just for the nice frame, along with two other paintings that were really good. Paid very little for them.

Then we checked them out. The two good ones turned out to be worth several hundred dollars each, once we traced the signatures.

So I looked at the truly terrible painting of a Hawk or falcon we’d bought. “Um….” With the way things were going, this probably was the first painting by some unknown painter in the 70’s who would only paint on battlefields in Vietnam or Laos, and it’s probably worth a thousand dollars. Or a hermit who only left his beach hut in Normandy, France, to sit on the beach on the full moon and paint.

But it’s horrible, so skip it. We put cardboard over it, stapled the cork roll right over the probably priceless and irreplaceable painting, and now it serves to hold the thumbtacks as I mercilessly drive my 3X31/2 cards into the cork board. Mwahahahaha!

Apparently, there’s now a science to cork boards. You split them in fours – Act one, Act two, act two, and act three. Yup. Act two is there twice.

So, I took my latest project, wrote up my turns and points, and plugged them in. Then I took the rest of the beats from Final Draft and plugged them in.

Um. That’s a lot of empty corkboard staring at me.

My outline sheet was roughly about 21 beats. The Save the cat beat sheet gives you about seven crucial points.

That’s 28. you need 40.

IF you can fill up those other 12 beats, you’ve got a movie, or a TV movie. If you can’t you don’t.

Now, there’s also the issue of those scenes you think of. I mean, writing is visceral. I don’t truly know if it’s the most difficult job in the world as one professional says, but certainly it’s not the walk in the park you think it is. I have TONS of ideas. And one thing I’m really good at is realistic dialogue. Which is why I’ll fight to the death over some of my dialogue.

But you’re not there! You’ve got to come up with 12 GOOD ideas. And some of the ones you write and you’re looking at and you think, “Ummm….”

Those go in an overflow area. I’m redoing my beat board today so the lower third of the beat board is just an overflow area.

Why do you do all this?

Because if you’re a planner and not a pants-er (almost every writer knows those terms), you can’t WRITE until you can SEE the movie. Blake Snyder of Save The Cat fame tells of his incessant fiddling with his beat board. He’ll hold cards, take them down, juggle them, staring at the beat board. I’m not that bad, but there’s a lot of LOOKING at the thing. And during that whole time, you’re getting your movie INSIDE you. Once you KNOW it, it’s INTERNALIZED…

Now you start writing. Hold onto your hats, because you’re about to knock out the movie in less than two weeks. At least, that’s how it is with me. Once I KNOW it, it’s INTERNALIZED, buddy, step aside!

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There’s not a whole lot of difference between having a blog on writing, and having a newspaper article. You have to show you can write, write well, and you have to have enough ideas to write a month of columns in advance.

Mark Pantinkin. Funny guy.

I mean, there was Mark Patinkin’s column in the Providence Journal. He’d write about the weirdest things! And get paid to do it. I don’t think I ever missed a day of reading his column.

That’s probably where I picked up my “blogging voice” from. And yes, Mark would write about his cousin from time to time. It’s funny, but at the time, Mark was better known in Rhode Island than Mandy was. Yes, Mandy Patinkin.Also known to most of us as Inigo Montoya. Yup. I bet you all started saying it. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Mandy Patinkin is also famous among Model Railroaders. He’s a Lionel buff, but he was known to carry around John Allen’s 101 Track Plans book while filming movies and study it between takes.

So, I wonder – could I supplement my income by writing for the Providence journal a column, the way that Mark Patinkin used to?

I wonder.

Hm.

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Growing up in Newport was kind of odd in one sense. I mean, I walked past the spot where General Rochambeau surrendered to George Washington a million times! I don’t think I ever thought as I walked past it, “Hey! That’s a historical spot!”

Houses on lower Spring Street had those steps on them that went up one side and down the other. And of course, I’d walk up the steps and down them again instead of using the sidewalk… because I was a kid. You know, Washington walked past those steps.

Standing in the harbor, there was a recreation of the USS Rose, who actually took part fighting against America in that war.

Newport gets in your bones. There’s all that history there, a feeling, a vibe. While all of Rhode Island has a specific feel you can’t find anywhere else in the world, and you’re definitely aware in Rhode Island of history, Newport had a feel all its own. Especially with the truly bizarre history of Newport as you dig deeper.

While i aspire to owning a Rhode Island sized home in Exeter or Coventry where a one acre lot seems to be the status quo and 5 acre lots are common (there’s one for sale in Coventry with 95+ acres, and they’re throwing in the historic 1712 house on the lot for free) – I’d trade it all to live on Mill street in Newport, or perhaps Bull Street. Or any of the little houses lining the cliffs on Ocean Drive.

And I can say I was stupid enough to join the Midnight club in Newport – turning off the headlights on your car on Ocean Drive at midnight and driving based on memory and sound. No accidents, so I passed. Of course, an accident on Ocean Drive means going over the edge and landing in… the ocean, 30 feet below. That’s pretty stupid, but I’d say it’s probably the stupidestest thing I did as a teenager.

I’m so grateful I had the chance to spend my youth in Newport. I’m so grateful I’d spend hours walking around the city looking at it, instead of getting into the trouble most other kids my age got into.

The images, thoughts and feelings of growing up there couldn’t come from anywhere else, even if I’d grown up in Providence! What I experienced moving into a house with TWO stairways truly inspired me, and to this day drives me with enough atmosphere that I’d say I absolutely have no alternative than to be a writer.

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Part of writing is that you often have to research. you can print things to PDF – I do that a lot. Another thing I’ve been doing is clipping things to Evernote.

The thing about saving things to PDF is that I can drag and drop the PDF’s to the research corkboard in Scrivener. You can also just clip it to Evernote, and you can actually just save the fragment you’re looking for.

Both systems have advantages. Because it always seems like there’s SOMETHING in every novel you stick in there that you don’t know about. People who know me are often amazed when I admit there’s gaps in my knowledge! Yes, I’ve learned (and can recall) a lot of facts about a lot of things.

I know a lot about Japanese swordfighting. I know a lot about Martial arts. I know a LITTLE about mountain climbing. now, see, that’s the kind of thing that creeps into your novels. I’m doomed that it’s going to happen. I know about freebase climbing, because it’s simple. Chalk your hands, grab a rock, put a foot up, and go that way (up).

I don’t know anything about crampons, carabiners, ropes, knots, or any of the other stuff. So i’m pretty much doomed to know that sooner or later there’s going to be a mountain lcimbing scene SOMEWHERE.

Boating. I know boats. They sit on water. If you’re lucky. Otherwise, they sink.

That’s it.

To write my first novel, I ended up learning a little about boats, waves, etc. I already knew about a lee shore from Moby dick, and from growing up in Newport. I mean, the Lee side of Newport has the big shopping street (Thames Street). The ocean side of the Island has… beaches. ANd NOBODY built on the beaches for a couple of hundred years – something Newport would do well to remember. The only stuff built close to the ocean was… the mansions, which were on Ocean Drive, and quite a height off the water.

so i had to learn MORE about follwing seas, confused seas, when you get your vessell to shore, how to survive a confused or following sea, wind speeds, wave heights, etc.

I had to learn how to build a buidling using natural materials found on site. How to build and construct a shelter you can hide. how many people it takes to make an effective settlement. Camouflage. combat patrols. survival foods and items.